Blue Elephants
by hieress
Summary: High School AU with mute!Echo/Leo "Well, why don't you teach me?" He grins, "Then I could teach you the little Morse code I know. We can have, like, secret communication between us."


**A/N: A Percy Jackson fic in a High School AU. Featuring Mute Mortal!Echo and Dumb Mortal!Leo. I didn't mean the dumb part seriously. Leo is still Leo. Except he doesn't have a god for a dad. Ehehe.**

**So here, a really late Christmas present but a little bit early New Year's. Maybe you should listen to The Raveonettes – The Christmas Song, because that's a good song. Here's a youtube link: www . youtube dot com slash watch?v=HrcPJ75zZso**

pooooq

Echo is most thankful for cell phones. Makes communication a _lot _more easier. Especially for her, more than it is for normal people.

She can't exactly tell people what she wishes to when no sound comes out of her mouth, but that's what phones are for! Besides, she isn't exactly that comfortable when people look at her face, usually with looks of pity, which she didn't need, exactly. It's not like she's always down about the fact, but she just that she doesn't mind it, at all!

"Echo." Echo jerks back her attention to Leo, who was nudging her arm, "Look at that one girl, wearing the pink jacket. I think she's trying to pick her nose, behind her book."

Leo wasn't even looking at her, instead turning to his phone, awaiting her reply.

**Blue_Elephants: What, no.**

**Blue_Elephants: I think she's trying to kiss the book, Leo.**

"That was a really dumb joke."

**Blue_Elephants: You just made me feel bad.**

**Blue_Elephants: You're hurting my feelings, Leo.**

**Blue_Elephants: How do you feel insulting a mute?**

**Blue_Elephants: Does it make you feel better?**

**Blue_Elephants: Does my heart breaking make you grow strong enough to smash mountains?**

"Hey, shut up," Leo says, but he's smiling at her and she's smiling at him when she texts: **Blue_Elephants: Not like I have control over that. :P**

booood

Leo is most thankful for chicken nuggets.

There is nothing to support this statement, really. Leo was just eating his lunch and today his chicken nuggets just happened to be especially delicious. Even if it's just the same chicken nuggets he used to eat yesterday and the day before that and all the time before that. He thinks it's his company but he doesn't have time to be poetic and all that.

**Blue_Elephants: Leo.**

**Blue_Elephants: You look like you're having some sort of religious epiphany.**

**Blue_Elephants: Are you about to give birth to a bunch of bratty Greek gods or what?**

**Blue_Elephants: Because I'm still kinda enjoying these nuggets.**

When your company is eating your nuggets, Leo thinks it _cannot _be the company that's causing his nuggets to taste good. It must be because it was Leo's mouth eating it. But that cannot be because Leo's mouth has been the same mouth eating the same nuggets he ate yesterday and –

Wow, we are not going through that again.

"Hey, those are mine!" Leo sulks, but he lets it go because it's Echo and Echo gets what she wants if she smiles at him in that way. Wow those are weird thoughts!

He watches Echo eat his nuggets.

They were really delicious nuggets.

poooooq

Ever since that incident, Leo's been looking at her weird.

What happened was that they were both walking together when a girl from Echo's special education program thing, Jenny, stopped by them and started making rapid gestures to Echo, which Leo realized actually had patterns to them when Echo responded with gestures of her own.

Leo has been _looking _at her since then. Which is the weird part, because he hadn't seemed to look at her a lot before.

Finally, after much looking happening from both sides, Leo with a curious look, at Echo with one that's almost terrified, Leo spoke, "Soo…" He wasn't even looking at his phone, like he's supposed to be, "That was some kinda sign language?"

**Blue_Elephants: Yeah…**

Leo still wasn't looking at his phone, instead looking at her, so Echo thrust her phone to his face. "What, oh. Why don't you talk to me like that? Seems a little nicer than these dumb phones. One day we're going to die and it's all because of the radiation, and it will be your fault."

**Blue_Elephants: Shut up, Leo.**

**Blue_Elephants: At least we could like, die together. But I don't think that's how it works. Sorry.**

**Blue_Elephants: Anyway, what's the point, it's not like you'd understand it, or anything.**

She thrusts the phone to him again, because he's still looking at her and she's really starting to feel weird.

"Well, why don't you teach me?" He grins, "Then I could teach you the little Morse code I know. We can have, like, secret communication between us."

**Blue_Elephants: I don't know.**

**Blue_Elephants: I'm pretty busy so…**

This time Leo looks at his phone, because having someone shove their phones violently to your eyes wasn't exactly his thing, especially if it happens twice.

"What?" He furrows his brows, looking very much like a scandalized wife, "You have plans? Are you making friends behind my back?"

Echo doesn't even bother responding, instead laughing at his face.

Leo's eyes brighten. He likes it when she laughs at his dumb jokes, mostly because her laughs are the best of all laughs– the silent, wheezing noise she makes, and soon he's laughing, too.

booood

Leo Valdez: Man or Mouse?

Leo Valdez, I'll have you know, is a man. Leo Valdez is going to do this. He will _own _this shit, make the ladies swoon, hot stuff, scrawny, etc., etc. At the end of the night, he'll have any lady _swooning _all over him like it's some sort of Ms. Fainting Competition. He'll be like _wanna go out with me to the dance? _And said lucky lady will be like _Oh! Do mine ears deceive me? Is Leo Valdez really asking me out? Oh, my dreams are coming true._

He looks at the tickets on his hands and his resolve crumbles.

Leo Valdez is a mouse. He _cannot _do this, oh gods, what was he even thinking, this was literally the worst ideas Leo ever had in a while, and he has _lots _of those. Just yesterday he said he was going to make cheese coated in chicken nuggets, what the fuck, who thinks this kinds of things. Also that's already been made, you ratty mouse. Ugh.

No, no, no! Leo Valdez is a man. Yes, he will do this.

_Flameo, hotman!_

pooooq

Echo knows something is up when Leo's nervous energy is up to its maximum. His hands are everywhere – sweeping his hair to his head, fingers tapping on his thigh (it takes her a moment to realize it was a mantra of _dios mio_s, because even though she refused to teach him sign language, he still managed to sneak a little Morse into her brain.)

**Blue_Elephants: I'm not sure if you're having some sort of special fit of seizure or what so would you just please tell me what's up.**

"Echo."

**Blue_Elephants: Leo.**

Leo hesitates, looks at her for a moment, eyes wide, as if he's about to pull a gun from behind him and start shooting her, and Echo seriously thinks about it as she watches his hands, move behind him, wiping the sweat, maybe, because then he flaps his arms to her direction, and there was no gun there.

Which is good. Only.

Only he starts moving them and she's not sure if he's showing that there is no gun on his hands or.

Or he's signing.

Echo feels faint.

**Blue_Elephants: What are you dOING**

**Blue_Elephants: LEO OH MY GDO**

**Blue_Elephants: DID YOU JUST SAY WHAT I THINK YO U DSAID**

**Blue_Elephants: YOU JSUT**

**Blue_Elephants: ASKED EM TO THEF**

**Blue_Elephants: CHRSITMAS DNACE THINGKY**

"Oh, good. I was so nervous I thought I asked you to shoot several babies and put them in Christmas presents."

**Blue_Elephants: LEO**

"I'm only joking." He laughs a little, "Only not really, but hey, an affirmative answer would be great right now."

This boy is so dumb. Only not really because, it was he who'd learned himself a little signing isn't he?

Anyway, this dance thing. Is it a friends or what? Echo is not sure what _what _is but she thinks that maybe she prefers it. Maybe.

**Blue_Elephants: WHAT**

"Gah. Sorry. I'll say 'as friends,' if you want, only I don't really want it as friends only," Leo rambles and Echo needs to stop him before he pulls out some sort of PowerPoint presentation on why they should hold hands and touch butts and exchange cooties. So, in response, Echo slowly signs the letters, _Y_, _E_, and _S_.

poooooq

This was a stupid idea.

They were sitting on Leo's bed, which they usually do together, studying school stuff, except now there are Christmas songs playing in the background and Echo is teaching Leo ASL and their books lay forgotten between them. It wasn't the most fun of activities, to be honest. Leo does not take anything seriously, what was Echo even thinking. She was _this _close to ripping her hair out.

**Blue_Elephants: YOU JUST ASKED ME TO MILK A HORSE LEO**

**Blue_Elephants: IM TOTALLY SURE YOU MEANT TO SIGN THAT**

**Blue_Elephants: YOURE THE WORST STUDENT EVER LEO**

"Woah. Woah," he grins, that stupid, stupid grin of his. "We can do this whole teacher student thing later."

He waggles his eyebrows suggestively and does the universal sign language for sticking one's drill into another's hole. He looks absolutely ridiculous that it makes her laugh, how can he even do that simultaneously?

Suddenly, he pauses, and this is even more ridiculous because his finger is still inside his encircled ones and his brows are still quirked. Echo smiles at him fondly, because how could this boy even be real, with his dumb curly hair and his dumb jokes and his dumb brain, how he's so good at fixing things and so tragically bad at swimming.

She's pulled out of her thoughts, because suddenly Leo's hand is pressing on some book on their bed and he's moving and _he's kissing her_.

Jingle Bells in playing the background and Echo thinks that one of her essays got crumpled on the bed when Leo shifted, but that's okay because his lips are warm, warm, warm against hers and she's barely started responding when he pulls away and there's a blush on his face and he keeps saying "Sorry, sorry!" and his fingers are saying a message on her arms too fast for her to understand.

Echo smiles and takes Leo's hand and slides it to her cheek. She places her hand on Leo's cheek, too and she thinks this is so dumb, but she taps a message she's familiar with.

bood

When they dance together and they wear fancy clothes, they dance close, so, so, close and Echo hears Leo faintly singing the song to her ears ("_I don't feel like coming home, now, I wish that I could stay-_"), she thinks that it couldn't be more perfect.

Leo taps the same message on her waist.

_I love you._

poooq


End file.
